Dr. Darryl Hodgkinson, the Founder and CEO of Operation Restore Hope is no ordinary plastic surgeon. He operates on children with cleft lip and palate for free. He has a clinic and accredited day surgery centre in DoubleBay, NSW.
Dr. Hodgkinson studied plastic surgery at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota (USA). This is where his interest not only aesthetic plastic surgery but also in reconstructive surgery was formed.
At Mayo Clinic, Dr. Hodgkinson worked with the famous craniofacial surgeon Dr. Ian Jackson, prior to working in Mexico City with plastic surgeon Dr. Ortiz Monasterio.His work in Mexico led to further charity work carrying out reconstructive surgery in Guatemala, India and Nepal with Save the Children and Christian Children’s Fund.
After founding the Peninsula Cleft Lip and Palate Clinic in Virginia, Dr. Hodgkinson was invited by the Filipino Doctors of America to accompany them as a principal plastic surgeon to Dumaguete in Negros Oriental.This was to be the first of many trips he made to the Philippines.
In 1994, Dr. Hodgkinson founded Operation Restore Hope which began in Cebu City, Philippines. Operation Restore Hope has performed corrective surgery on more than 1,500 children in the Philippines. They send 3 teams each year for missions in Cebu and CaloocanCity in Manila.Ongoing programs with local Filipino surgeons have also been established and are being developed.
But there are just not enough trained surgeons in the Philippines to deal with numerous cases of cleft lip and palate. Without access to the free surgery provided through Operation Restore Hope Australia, operative repair is unlikely to happen for many poor children in the Philippines.
There is no doubt that Dr. Hodgkinson has earned for himself a special place in heaven. He says, however, that he is “in no hurry to get there.” After all, he wants to restore hope to more Filipino children. ?